Open science

“Open” is a nice sounding word, not unlike “free”, that is used rather liberally whenever some bit of intellectual property is shared with the public. However, it can mean very different things in different circumstances. Ideally, it is legally defined in some sort of license.

Open Source Code

In the context of source code, “open” simply means that the user is allowed to see the source code. They don’t necessarily have any rights to DO anything with it. For that, there are licenses like GNU GPL and the MIT X11 license. One license I’d like to highlight here is the CRAPL, which is specifically geared towards code written by academics. The goal is to get this research code released to the public, despite being very rough. Here are some excerpts from part 3 of the license:

“If the Program shows any evidence of having been properly tested or verfied, You will disregard this evidence.”

“You agree to hold the Author free from shame, embarrassment or ridicule for any hacks, kludges or leaps of faith found within the Program.”

“You recognize that any request for support for the Program will be discarded with extreme prejudice.”

Open Data

For data, the meaning of “open” is quite ambiguous. There are many open databases and experimental datasets that are available freely on the web. However, some of these have licenses that restrict what can be done with the data, including prohibitions on publication (eg, via). The Panton Principles provide a useful framework for what can be considered a “license” for datasets, but it has yet to be formalized into a proper license. In this respect, the Panton Principles have company, including the Budapest Open Access Initiative, a memo at the Science Commons, and the more general Open Definition.

Open Hardware

The Open Hardware Summit is tomorrow (sold out!). They still don’t have a license, but they do have a working set of criteria for what can be considered “Open Source Hardware”. Maybe there’ll be more news on this front soon.